Breastfeeding and working

[Shanster]

I went back to work a few weeks ago when my baby was 12 weeks old - now I have two problems -

1. I have been expressing twice a day at work, but if I am having a stressful day I don't get the 18 ounces I need for the next day. I tend to be abour 3 ounces short twice a week. How can I introduce formula for the shortfall without making my supply problem worse?

1. When I am home now, baby just wants to be constantly attached to the breast. After she is full, she tugs and sucks until it hurts. She now won't go to bed at night unless she has fallen asleep at the breast...making me a human dummy. How can I break this cycle?

I'm no expert- hopefully a bf counsellor will be along soon - but my thoughts are as follows:

Firstly I'm so impressed - it sounds like you're doing really well to keep expressing and feeding and working at the same time...

In terms of the first point - are you working full time? If so, maybe you should consider expressing 3-4 times a day because twice a day for a 12 week old doesn't sound like a lot of milk for that age to me. They're still feeding little and often at that stage I think.

With your second point (re the tugging/sucking etc) - the baby is basically sending signals to the boobs to produce more milk. So I'd probably allow her to stay on the boob to make sure you can keep increasing the milk supply as she continues to grow and need more.

It sounds generally like unfortunately you need to express/feed even more - difficult though that may be - to keep up your supply and allow it to increase as your daughter gets bigger.

It may be worth posting in 'breast and bottle feeding'?

thanks for the advice!

For the best advice give the La Leche League a call - they will be able to put you through to a breastfeeding counsellor who will have bags of advice.

Well done on what you are doing! My DD is 1 year and I am expressing once a day at work - sometimes - to relieve the engorgement - and sometimes not. I think that at 3 months you will need to express more often. It isn't easy to find the time but oh it is so well spent because that milk is better than gold dust for your DD.

If you have to give a bit of formula whilst you have a shortfall then you may have to do it, but so long as you keep on feeding and keep on expressing I am sure it won't be long before you are making that shortfall up yourself.

My DD still insists on sucking long after the milk has gone. It gives them so much comfort, so I have decided to just keep on doing it so unfortunately don't have any words of advice on that one. However,I have heard that getting them to use a dummy can help break this habit.

hello,

I go to breastfeeding support group organised by the BfN and they are really very lovely and helpful.
www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/
some stuff on the website and the phone number is 0300 0100 0212 (not expensive).

I pumped for a long time with my son but he was about 6/7 months (and eating food) when I went back to work but he didn't have anywhere near the amount you mention. Left him with something ranging between 6-8 oz for a long day,pumped twice a day. He didn't have all of it. USed an avent pump the expensive automatic variety but it was never as good as the handpump. Also found it better with the trumpet hot/warm.